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It's not impossible, but it can be extremely difficult. Consider a short story published in a literary journal last week. Allow a copyright system to exist tha

It's not impossible, but it can be extremely difficult. Consider a short story published in a literary journal last week. Allow a copyright system to exist that covers each eligible work for 30 years by default, and allows multiple extensions of 5 years at a cost of $1000 per extension per work, up to a total copyright term of 100 years. Someone in 2047 discovers a copy of this particular journal issue, which has now become obscure. They identify that this short story, though never being given acclaim, has had a subtle yet profound cultural influence. They decide to republish the story in their own commercial magazine, but want to check if the copyright has been extended. If it has not, the story is in the public domain. If is has been extended, the story is still covered by copyright. They can search the central registry for the title of the short story and the name of the author. But they also have to search for the names of the editors of the journal, because it isn't clear whether or not the copyright stayed with the author or was transferred to the journal as part of the submission process. In fact, the copyright might have been granted to the owner of the journal, which may be an individual or may be an institution. The entry for the copyright might be under the title of the short story, or under the title for the journal, or under the title of that particular issue of the journal. Furthermore, the author of the story, if they retained the copyright, may have submitted the story under a pen name, and/or may have registered the copyright of the short story under a different title than the title they used to submit to the journal, or the title might have been changed by the editors. Or, the author, after having the short story accepted by the journal, may have sold it to a publisher who published it in a short fiction anthology, the copyright for which is registered completely separately and is essentially invisible to our hypothetical future researcher. Any of these agents might have extended the copyright. It would be extremely difficult to prove to a high degree of certainty that the story was or was not covered by copyright.

icebraining 13y ago
Why can't you just type in a section (say, a paragraph) of the work and have a fuzzy search locate it, instead of relying on just the title and author? I think your situation is only difficult due to poor technology. Youtube can now identify even distorted sections of videos and audio against an huge catalog of works, why can't the copyright registry?
- sp332 13y ago
  It would help, but it still wouldn't be clear if the version you're holding is the one that was copyrighted. It would also be basically impossible for anything more intensive than text.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Just give it a number and make protection contingent upon publication of same with the work.
- sp332 13y ago
  But then you would have to put a number on every work just in case you extend the copyright later. Otherwise you might have a 35-year-old work and have no idea if its copyright has been extended because it was not originally printed with a number.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    >> Just give it a number and make protection contingent upon publication of same with the work. > you might have a 35-year-old work and have no idea if its copyright has been extended because it was not originally printed with a number No... if protection is contingent on publication of the number along with the work, then a work printed without a number is unprotected. There is no concept of "extending copyright" on a work that isn't even copyrighted.
slyall 13y ago
but under the current system we still have the same problem. We know the story is copyright to somebody but we have no idea who.
VLM 13y ago
How about: Violation of a registered copyright only carries punishment if "the" UUID of the work is registered and is contained in the work (byline, front page, whatever as appropriate). Doesn't actually matter if the UUID has any relationship to the work, although it would be nice if it did. Example, This HN post from 2014 is registered copyright UUID 12345-23-242342 by VLM. In 2097 simply check https://copyright.example/12345-23-242342 https://copyright.example/12345-23-242342 for current status. Instead of copyright.example, I hope they can think of a more intelligent international (interplanetary?) domain name, but the general idea holds. Don't want copyright enforced on a work created in 2015, simply neglect to list the UUID you got at registration. I see no reason a registration should be expensive other than the usual crooks trying to eliminate competition. No technological reason. False claim (intentional random numbers instead of valid registration) equals instant public domain. Essentially this large integer is the title - registration ID - type of concept for this copyrighted media. Personally I think it would be awesome if the title generator also stored licensing info. My panoramic landscape photo is not only registered to me, but is CC:NC. If you messed with the system you could force all UUID beginning with 0 to be all rights reserved, all UUID beginning with 9 to be CC:SA. Just keep on generating UUIDs until you get ASCII codes for C, C, S, and A as the first 4 bytes for a CC:SA UUID. Or the first 3 bytes being ASCII G, P, and L. Better be a long/wide UUID system.
- sp332 13y ago
  Since the digits in a UUID are independent, just overwrite the first characters to whatever you want. You don't have to keep generating random numbers.
- mattdw 13y ago
  UUID "contained in the work" would be troublesome in many mediums (music recordings, film, paintings, for instance). Perhaps "travels with the work" would be manageable though. And it's worth considering that every tweet, every photo on Flickr, every video on YouTube, every status update on FB, and so on, constitutes a new copyrightable work. Not everyone will care about the copyrights of their tweets, but some will. How do you copyright something for which you have no control of the identifiers? I assume you don't intend for people to hit up the service for a new UUID before tweeting and embed the token in their tweet? (Obviously this problem would go away if e.g. Twitter itself signed onto this scheme, automatically registering and UUIDing your tweets on your behalf.)

icebraining 13y ago

Why can't you just type in a section (say, a paragraph) of the work and have a fuzzy search locate it, instead of relying on just the title and author? I think your situation is only difficult due to poor technology. Youtube can now identify even distorted sections of videos and audio against an huge catalog of works, why can't the copyright registry?

sp332 13y ago
It would help, but it still wouldn't be clear if the version you're holding is the one that was copyrighted. It would also be basically impossible for anything more intensive than text.

anigbrowl 13y ago

Just give it a number and make protection contingent upon publication of same with the work.

sp332 13y ago
But then you would have to put a number on every work just in case you extend the copyright later. Otherwise you might have a 35-year-old work and have no idea if its copyright has been extended because it was not originally printed with a number.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  >> Just give it a number and make protection contingent upon publication of same with the work. > you might have a 35-year-old work and have no idea if its copyright has been extended because it was not originally printed with a number No... if protection is contingent on publication of the number along with the work, then a work printed without a number is unprotected. There is no concept of "extending copyright" on a work that isn't even copyrighted.

slyall 13y ago

but under the current system we still have the same problem. We know the story is copyright to somebody but we have no idea who.

VLM 13y ago

How about: Violation of a registered copyright only carries punishment if "the" UUID of the work is registered and is contained in the work (byline, front page, whatever as appropriate). Doesn't actually matter if the UUID has any relationship to the work, although it would be nice if it did. Example, This HN post from 2014 is registered copyright UUID 12345-23-242342 by VLM. In 2097 simply check https://copyright.example/12345-23-242342 https://copyright.example/12345-23-242342 for current status. Instead of copyright.example, I hope they can think of a more intelligent international (interplanetary?) domain name, but the general idea holds. Don't want copyright enforced on a work created in 2015, simply neglect to list the UUID you got at registration. I see no reason a registration should be expensive other than the usual crooks trying to eliminate competition. No technological reason. False claim (intentional random numbers instead of valid registration) equals instant public domain. Essentially this large integer is the title - registration ID - type of concept for this copyrighted media. Personally I think it would be awesome if the title generator also stored licensing info. My panoramic landscape photo is not only registered to me, but is CC:NC. If you messed with the system you could force all UUID beginning with 0 to be all rights reserved, all UUID beginning with 9 to be CC:SA. Just keep on generating UUIDs until you get ASCII codes for C, C, S, and A as the first 4 bytes for a CC:SA UUID. Or the first 3 bytes being ASCII G, P, and L. Better be a long/wide UUID system.

sp332 13y ago
Since the digits in a UUID are independent, just overwrite the first characters to whatever you want. You don't have to keep generating random numbers.
mattdw 13y ago
UUID "contained in the work" would be troublesome in many mediums (music recordings, film, paintings, for instance). Perhaps "travels with the work" would be manageable though. And it's worth considering that every tweet, every photo on Flickr, every video on YouTube, every status update on FB, and so on, constitutes a new copyrightable work. Not everyone will care about the copyrights of their tweets, but some will. How do you copyright something for which you have no control of the identifiers? I assume you don't intend for people to hit up the service for a new UUID before tweeting and embed the token in their tweet? (Obviously this problem would go away if e.g. Twitter itself signed onto this scheme, automatically registering and UUIDing your tweets on your behalf.)